Teoría y práctica del diseño urbano para la reflexión de la ciudad contemporánea

235 Experiencias contemporáneas del diseño urbano New urban housing design in the UK ferent locations to different population groups. The ‘design’ of those houses/apartments became a central concern of plan- ning authorities keen to gain as much benefit from the ren- aissance of their central areas as possible. At the same time however, Adams and Tiesdell (2007) indicate that the changing regulatory climate encouraged during the urban renaissance created an opportunity space for design and designers of housing. In other words developers - those who provide the housing product – recognised that design quality was an emerging area where the marketing of their product could be advanced. Having said that there is evidence that the housing produced during this urban renaissance was of variable quality, with less than a fifth of all the medium- density projects surveyed by CABE (Commission on Archi- tecture and the Built Environment) being considered a ‘good standard’ (Punter, 2009). This paper will explore the issue of new urban housing in the following way. Firstly the paper will examine what we might consider to be good quality housing before exploring how the planning system encourages certain types of housing design and methods for its assessment. Secondly we will attempt to outline how the UK’s planning system, speculative housing market and the producers of new housing seek to influence the quality of new urban housing. This will be structured around the four main issues that we have identified as being of importance in the production of housing: the regulatory framework including an examination of where the trade- offs between key stakeholders might lie in negotiating hous- ing outcomes; market conditions including issues of housing shortage and supply, competition and investor demand; the type of developer including the model of development that the developer subscribes to; and, site conditions including the unique of characteristics of a particular site, value and owner- ship issues. We then seek to examine Tiesdell and Adams’ model of developer’s opportunity space in order to explore these issues further. Finally the paper will draw some conclu- sions about the ways in which new urban housing has been produced and consider how planning authorities might en- sure the quality of housing in the future.